Posted
by
samzenpus
on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @06:57PM
from the light-it-up dept.

TaeKwonDood writes "LEDs don't beat CFLs in the home yet, but it's not simply because PG&E is getting rich making people feel like they are helping the environment buying CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save. It's a problem of indication versus illumination. However, some new discoveries are going to change all that."

LEDs are not traditionally used for illumination not only because of the costs of LEDs, but because of the complex optics required to distribute the light. it's rare to see LEDs used for illumination, though it is making an entrance for some applications, like flashlights [maglite.com] and even headlamps [motorauthority.com]. As LED prices continue to come down and LED optics technology improves and cost stabilize, conventional LED lamp retrofits will become commonplace. Take a look at LEDtronics [ledtronics.com] for some examples.

Yeah they looked awful. LEDs produce too much light in the more violet spectrums. Making each of them look like they are surrounded by a purple/black aura to me. The old style lights are a lot warmer and more inviting.

Um, no. That's nonsense. LEDs work just fine on DC, and that's the most common way to power them. In the simplest case, you just use a properly calculated current-limiting resistor as a current source, but any current source with the right output will work. For more complex needs (dimming, colour blending, etc) you can modulate them quite easily while keeping the pulses well above what the human eye can discern. You are alluding to that in the last sentence of your post, but a 10% duty cycle at 10kHz is DC,

Sorry but I don't buy the optics issue. It really can't be THAT hard to put a lens or reflector in the armature and point multiple LEDs in different directions. If anything LEDs should be preferable to incandescents because it is easier to take something very directional and spread the light than it is focus the light from a divergent source. I think the main reason LEDs are not popular yet is cost and "it's not what I'm used to". Seeing the type of crap people will buy even when there are better alternatives I simply don't believe that something as sophisticated as the beam profile of an LED will be a huge issue.

It's actually harder than it seems. Just imagine trying to light up a room using a laser. How hard can it be, right? LEDs are *very* directional too.

It takes far more than a simple lens, or a simple reflector to manage to illuminate a workspace evenly using them. Reflectors work fine for incandescent/fluorescent and such non-directional light sources.

That's why we see LEDs thrive in many applications like flashlights and traffic lights and not others: those require directional light.

And even if you found a great way to do it, it would still add [likely significant] cost, and likely a fair amount of weight, if using optics. It would probably look like a huge catadioptric lens of a lighthouse (well, the inverse job, but a huge chunk of glass is what I meant). The best I've seen so far, is using a large number of lesser power LEDs...

For something more compact and less wet (a consideration around compact electrical devices): a diffraction grating. Add a glass frosting on top of a couple of layered diffraction gratings to make the light more evenly diffuse.

For something more compact [...]: a diffraction grating. Add a glass frosting on top of a couple of layered diffraction gratings to make the light more evenly diffuse.

A similarly simple/cheap solution would be to use a non-perfect parabola or convex mirror. The LED beam, though directed, is not infinitely thin. Therefore, putting it at the "focal" point of a shiny, non-perfectly parabolic surface or aiming it towards a matte convex mirror would also do the trick.

Sure, as long as you don't mind destroying the energy efficiency that was the original reason for using LEDs in the first place.

It's definitely not trivial to take a directional light source and shape it so that the output is directionally uniform. I'm a cyclist, and I use LED lights for riding at night. They're just now getting to the point that they're reasonably priced, with decent power, and with a decent beam pattern in maybe a 10-15 degr

I suspect it's easy to make uniform mono-chromatic light, but people want white LEDs which have phosphor to convert part of the blue to yellow. That needs to be uniform and likely complicates matters. Notice that most LED flash lights have a bluish center, even the pricey Maglites suffer from this. A good halogen bulb is still much more uniform, which makes it more useful when trying to find things in the dark (no patterns imprinted on the scene from your light.)

The experiance of everyone I know who has tried LED light fixtures is they simply don't have the ability to decently light a room (whether this is due to thier being simply less light output or whether it is some other characteristic of the light I don't know) while CFLs do. They are also FAR more expensive than CFLs.

Thats definitely per cost, not per watt preventing room lighting. I suspect it is the same as CFL, many manufactures overstate the "equivalent light" factor causing a perception of dimmer. I bought led lights for my aquarium, just the 4 watt night lighting lights up 2 rooms ( not reading wise, but way too bright for a night light, the water diffuses the light nicely)The directional nature also means to be truly efficient you would want more locations, the lasts (nearly) forever nature would tend to lead to a permanent mount.So saving the cost of running thicker wires, fixture boxes, fixtures, 5 amp switches, etc should make LED lighting affordable for new houses/additions/remodels fairly soon.(Especially for warm locations where you pay for all heat sources double, with AirCond)

Seeing the type of crap people will buy even when there are better alternatives I simply don't believe that something as sophisticated as the beam profile of an LED will be a huge issue.

"Better" without specifying or considering criteria is subjective. IMHO a Ferrari is a better car than a Porsche, but by what criteria? I can also say that the Porsche is better than the Ferrari, and not be contradictory because I'm considering different aspects, i.e., am I referring to asthetics, raw performance, comfort, r

Although I agree with some points of your post, most of your belief is not quite accurate. LEDs now make the best flash light illumination, and the power drain on batteries is minimal. I've been using LED headlamps for years, so this is nothing new, as your post implies.

The problem with them being used in homes is that they direct their illumination to a specific spot. This is not a bad thing though. I've recently seen them configured as spot lamps. Perfect for recessed lighting.

The optics in LED technology can easily be modified to diffuse light to make a great replacement for CFL & incandescent. Give it time.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with LED "lightbulbs" like those in TFA, only LED flashlights

To me, the biggest hangup on going to LED lighting from CFLs would be the spectral issue. In my experience, "white" LEDs don't actually put out true white light, but rather several distinct wavelengths that look approximately white to human eyes. IIRC they lose some definition with red/green. Not as big an issue for a flashlight, but in room lighting I'd kind of want all the colors showing up. This may very well be solved by now, however. I don't know.

CFLs have to address the same problem. Mercury vapor by itself glows in the UV range. The rest is done with phosphors, as in "white" LEDs. It's just a matter of getting the right "blend" of phosphors that balances efficiency with a decent color range. Of course, you're never going to get the full spectrum of an incandescent source--be they lightbulbs or the sun. But they'll eventually get pretty dang close.

For about a year now, my home office has been lit with LEDs. I have 3 watt units on goosenecks that I switch on and twist for directed illumination, and arrays of RGB units that have tunable color. They all feed through the UPS that protects my desktop, and consumes, at most, a little over twelve watts (when all lights are on and RGBs are set to white light). I'm quite happy with the effect and level of illumination. The only downside is that the rest of the room is relatively dim, lit only with reflected l

I've got a nice, tungesten-coloured LED right here that emits nearly omnidirectional light if I just remove the lens that comes with it. I don't think directionality is really any kind of inherent problem, just a manufacturing issue.

The projectors my school uses seem to follow the razor business model. $20 projector, $50-70 nonstandard bulb. Unlikely that company would switch to something that lasts longer. Unless they move to a completely closed unit (no replacing the bulb/fan/power supply).

That is why they are great in torches, head lamps, and backlights - because you don't need complex optics to focus the light. White LEDs are still quite expensive though, so bulb made out of it would be a lot more expensive than a standard one.

Does either company make a 5-pound 4 DCell flashlight built around a sturdy pipe that you would *not* want to be hit with? MagLites double as nightsticks, which is half their appeal. SureFire's "self defense flashlight" looks specifically built for security guards that are forbidden to carry anything useful as a weapon.

That article repeats a bunch of CFL myths. I find it amazing to watch some in the geek crowd glob onto any "science" related conspiracy ("global warming is fake", "the Hindenburg didn't burn from hydrogen", etc) the same way tin-foil hat people glob onto the "moon hoax" or "there was no plane crash at the Pentagon on 9/11".

We even were treated to one in the header of this article:

"CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save."

Oh, really, is that so? Shipping cargo takes about one gallon of gas per ton of cargo per 500 miles [google.com]. Shanghai is ~6500 miles from LA. Thus, 154 pounds can cross the Pacific per gallon of diesel. A gallon of diesel contains 130MJ. A CFL weighs perhaps a quarter pound. Therefore, it takes 211kJ of fuel energy per bulb. If we assume the big diesel engine is roughly as efficient as a power plant's electricity generation, we can compare them directly. 211 kilojoules is 0.05 kilowatt hours. If usage that bulb reduces 60 watts down to 15, thus saving 45 watts, it'd take barely over an hour to pay off the energy used in shipping it.

Of course, you also need to include train shipping energy consumption to get it to and from the ports, which is more like one gallon per ton per 300 miles, but that too is trivial to pay off.

In hot areas you get to double up on savings, so to speak. The wasted energy in a light bulb is given off as heat. So if you live in a climate warm enough to need to cool your house, the lightbulbs just add to the problem. You get a 100 watt bulb that is giving of like 90 of that in heat.

CFLs are much better of course. They still give off heat, but far less per amount of light output. So you get a double savings. You cut the amount of energy going in to the light, and cut the amount of heat waste which cuts

You are either buying CFLs from a completely incompetent manufacturer, or simply have a bizarre situation where reality is bending around you.

I replaced all bulbs in my home with CFLs three years ago. None have burned out to date, and I saw a small but measureable decrease in home energy use, as my home energy costs are very stable. Everyone I know who has replaced all or some of their bulbs have had the same experience.

There's demonstrable energy savings to be had, and a measureable lifespan increase simply due to the physics of CFL versus incandescent.

You are either buying CFLs from a completely incompetent manufacturer, or simply have a bizarre situation where reality is bending around you.

Or he's compulsive about turning off lights when he walks out of a room for two seconds. CFLs don't like to be switched many times, so they're great in a living room where you tend to turn them one once at the beginning of the evening but maybe not so much in a frequently-used bathroom.

My experience is limited, but out the 23 bulbs I put into the fixtures in this apartment (the bathroom mirrors had 5 '20 watt' sockets each) I've only had one go out. I also had two bad ones out of the plastic, all from the same package from some dirt cheap no-name brand I've not seen before or since.
And prior to moving in here last may I've only had one other die in the three+ years I've been using them.
This far enough below my replace rate for in

I haven't changed a lightbulb in at least five, and even that was because somebody hit it with a broom handle. I don't remember much from when I was a kid but those other types of lights would die every now and then.

Have you done it recently? The CFLs I bought in the nineties are still working. The ones I bought last year aren't measurably any longer lasting than the few incandescents I still use. I suspect that now everyone has jumped on the bandwagon, there are a lot of crappy cut-rate CFLs being made. And I'm pretty sure that this isn't being taken into account in figuring overall real-world environmental impact.

Contributing to this, as Fred and Ethyl Mertz buy eight-packs of CFLs at Costco, they're certainly using them in situations where they don't work well -- like areas where the lights go on and off frequently. (I made this mistake initially -- couldn't figure out why CFLs were lasting months rather than years in the bathroom.) Which, as you point out, really is doing it wrong. CFLs work well in narrowly-defined environments -- they're not a replacement for every bulb in the house. The general public doesn't appear to realize this, and the retailers are in no hurry to correct their misunderstanding.

I used to buy the $3.29 CFL's they die, slow warm up, fell like they are on fire.

I switched to buying $8.99-$12.99 Sylvania CFL's and they are instant on even in 21degF temperatures in the garage feel cool to the touch even after running for 4 hours. and they dont change color like the crappy ones do after the first 50 hours.

>> couldn't figure out why CFLs were lasting months rather than years in the bathroom

You bought crappy CFLs. CFL's don't have a problem with on/off as long as you're not running a disco or something. My 5 round CFL bulbs in the bathroom are going strong after 2 years. Same for everyone else in the family.

I agree that CFLs aren't for every possible use, but they are great for almost everything. The only thing they're not great for is decorative lamps (although you can get different shapes of CFLs) and outdoor lamps that aren't always on in cold environments (takes too long to warm up and produce full light).

Which, as you point out, really is doing it wrong. CFLs work well in narrowly-defined environments -- they're not a replacement for every bulb in the house. The general public doesn't appear to realize this, and the retailers are in no hurry to correct their misunderstanding.

Agreed. The general public also doesn't seem to be the only ones when you hear about legislators considering legally phasing out incandescent bulb production and sales over the next N years. That may be more feasible if LED lighting can start working in the situations where incandescent lighting stumbles.

I've seen similar issues with specific outlets in my house. CFLs last about 2 months and incancesdents a year or two. The problem appears to be fluctuating power supplies. Our house's power isn't very stable... the vacuum cleaner, dryer, and other devices cause lights to slightly dim or flicker. I've solved most of it by separating the circuits, but the CFLs seem to be VERY sensitive to fluctuating electricity.

Incandescent bulbs will last 7 times longer if you run them dimmed to 90% brightness, and they will last 20 times longer if dimmed to 50% brightness. The output from a Dimmer Switch is very chopped up power, not smooth at all.

CFL bulbs will give you 10+ years of service if you leave them on for at least 30 minutes everytime you turn one on. Not good for use in bathrooms or inside refrigerators.

As for shipping, CFLs are quite a bit heavier than a twisted tungsten wire, so shipping a container of CFLs the same distance as a container of incandescent bulbs could well cost more too.

Except that commercial shipping is usually done by volume not weight. Only if the weight is extremely excessive does it matter for pricing. Shipping containers are usually charged by the container, not by the weight. They have a weight *limit*, but that is not the same thing. I can't imagine hitting the weight limit of a container with any kind of light bulb.

Then there is something seriously wrong with your wiring or the bulbs you buy. The claims are sometimes overdone on the packaging, but it was much worse back in 2001 than now. Also, some manufacturers are more reliable than others (feit electric at Costco and Sylvania at lowes, other places, seem to be good for certain models). The Walmart brand Great Value seems to be horrible, at least in my experience.

I've had enclosed Par 38 CFLs (23w) die on me with some regularity although it has gotten a little better the last year. OTOH the enclosed Par 20 (13w CFL) have been absolutely solid since 2004, after a bad first run.

My longest lasting lights about 10 regular 13 watters --60w equivalent-- enclosed exterior ones. They started in all temps from (-5F to 100F). They used to be dusk to dawn for the first 3 years, so I guess 12 hours a day on average through the year, then the solar cell went bad on several 2 3-lamp posts and so 6 lights were running continuously for about a year (busy year). When I fixed that, put a timer in to start at dusk and turn off rougly midnight.

Through those 6 years, about 5 lights went bad. Keep in mind, they were running around probably 4,380 hrs a year. One year it was the max 8,760 with no breaks. And now, it's down to 2,190. This is probably due to them being on for extended periods and not constantly switched on and off which wears on a ballast and kills the shoddy ballasts fast.

CFLs are a type of fluorescents, and if the ballast is shoddy, you can forget it. Also had to replace every fluorescent ballast in a section of newly constructed office space once as one in an entire row (same manufacturer) went bad one at a time in a short period. Doesn't meant fluorescent tech is bad, means it was either a bad manufacturer or bad run. BTW, there can be bad fluorescent tubes as well, Philips seems to be good while the much cheaper Sylvania contractor packs are shit.

Just how it goes. Go to some CFL forums and learn. Have no experience with dimmers though. Don't have a one.

Thats funny because all the CFL's I have at home have lasted for YEARS. The only one that has ever burned out is the one in my fridge, after 4 years. They have lasted far far longer than any other bulb I have ever used, with a huge savings in electricity usage.

I don't know what kind of crap CFL's you buy but the ones I have work perfectly, with vast lifespans. I just bought them at home depot or wherever.

I buy these bulbs [amazon.com], at about $1.25 per. Their color temperature seems closest to true daylight to me, and I've tried almost all of the different bulbs marketed as such. I hate the orange-ish glow of the "normal" bulbs now, and hate all of the CFLs' color I've tried too.

As other's have mentioned, you must be fantastically unlucky to be getting those failure rates. I haven't had to replace a single one of the 10 bulbs I put in 2 years ago. Maybe your power is unstable? I've heard that CFLs tend to not like uneven power.

Also you mention rising electricity bills, but of course that has nothing to do with CFLs. They use less power, so you're doing something else to make up the difference. Not "probably" as you say, but absolutely certainly.

As for shipping, it's incredibly unlikely that the weight is a factor in comparing traditional bulbs to CFLs. Volume is going to be a limiting factor for both of them. No way would a cargo ship have to load fewer containers of CFLs because of some weight limitation. They ship containers of steel for crist's sake.

Sounds about right. We seem to have to replace 6 CFLs for every one incandescent bulb.

I think you may have a problem with your light switches, if your CFLs are lasting such a short time.

Something to remember about CFLs is that their life is drained by switching them on and off much moreso than for incandescents. On the other hand, incandescents' life is drained by keeping them on much moreso than for CFLs.

I had an experience where when we installed a CFL in a particular socket, the corresponding switch was faulty(it would not go all the way up or down unless you pushed it harder than normal)

They don't have to make such claims. If the incandescent bulbs involve the same shipping overhead as the CFLs (as the grandparent is sarcastically suggesting), then the claims that CFLs are more environmentally friendly stand up. That's the point, period. The shipping costs mentioned (without any sort of supporting data, I might add) in the summary is only a valid issue if incandescents are made locally.

No, it's valid if they're both made extra-nationally, but in different places. Most incandescents are actually made in the United States by GE, but the vast bulk of the remainder are made in Mexico, and shipped up by rail, which is far more efficient than slow-boating them from China. It turns out that there are more than one country outside of America, and that those countries aren't actually all in the same location.

Of course, if anyone actually did the math, they'd find out that the energy cost of shipping is offset by the energy savings in usage in under three days; sometimes I wonder whether people have any idea how many lightbulbs fit on a large boat, or how little fuel a large boat actually needs.

Without even doing any calculations of the amount of fuel needed to ship the CFL, it's obvious that this environmental cost is more than offset by the savings in power of using a CFL vs an incandescent. The simple way to figure this out is to look at the price, and the cost savings of the bulb over a couple months time. A new CFL only costs a couple dollars to buy. That means (unless companies are selling them at a loss) that it costs less than this amount to ship the bulb to you. Assuming for a minute that the cost of energy in fuel and coal powering a power plant are the same (with the same efficiencies etc, in reality the power grid powered by coal is generally cheaper per watt, but that's okay), if you can make up the cost of the bulb in a matter of months by lowering your electric bill, you have more than made up for the cost of shipping.

I always laugh when people start talking about carbon footprints and all that. Currently the simplest and only real way to drastically reduce your carbon footprint is to spend less money. Things that cost more in general have a greater carbon footprint (there are exceptions to this rule, but it often holds true). So the footprint of manufacturing a new stove is roughly proportional to how much the stove costs (obviously if you're buying a gold plated stove with platinum racks this won't quite hold true). So the quickest way to halve the US's carbon footprint is to cut the US's spending power in half. Of course, with the steps the government is taking to reverse the current economic crisis, they could easily accomplish this.

Thanks. Some actual information is way more helpful than the vague claims swirling about. I thought about trying to figure out where bulbs are being produced, but didn't have a lot of luck with the Google.

Errr... could we have some actual numbers for that? Are we seriously asked to believe that the energy saved by a metric ton of CFLs over their lifetime is less than the cost of a one-trip transport on a freighter? Or is that just another bitter remark aimed at those silly little hippies who want to save their pwecious planet and their breathable atmosphere and their clean water?

It is amazing what hate there is for anything new. More amazing because many of us have made money off the next new thing. What is even more embarrassing is the innumeracy illustrated in the FUD.

Let's say that you do pay extra for the incandescent light bulb made in the US. Let's further assume that number of times a user has to drive to the store and replace the incandescent light bulb is compensated by the increased mass, and chemicals, in the CFL. Even with that, one can't ignore the basic physics

Actually, caving (don't call it spelunking [wikipedia.org]) is one of the areas that modern LEDs have absolutely taken over: the combination of efficiency, durability, longetivity, and small package size have completely replaced incandescent options (e.g., http://www.stenlight.com/ [stenlight.com])

Old-time carbide lamps still have limited application, mostly in giant caves and/or extremely long & cold expeditions, but Fluorescent has always been far too fragile in terms of packaging to warrant consideration.

You're seriously trying to claim that the savings of CFLs are offset by shipment? Really?

I would go into the obvious math or the economics, but honestly this is just simply too stupid to even deserve further comment, except that it is a completely asinine, baseless statement that I'm sure will be picked up and repeated by a lot of ignorant contrarians.

I'm going to use Diesel for the energy calculations. I know that ships run off bunker fuel, not diesel, but I have to think that the cost per unit of energy for bunker fuel is cheaper than diesel since it's less refined, so by using Diesel I'm being conservative. Right now you can buy diesel for under $2/gal, so with 75% of $3800, we can buy 1425 gallons of diesel.

Diesel has 38 MJ [hypertextbook.com] of energy per liter (143 MJ/gal), or 40KWh according to the units command.

Sooooo....a CFL will save the energy used to ship it in about 25 hours of operation. CFL's are supposed to last 5000 hours, so over its lifetime, it will save over 200 times more energy than used to ship it. (of course, this is only this shipping energy, and ignores the extra energy that it took to manufacture the CFL it as compared to an incadescent. I don't know how to do that math).

just my wallet. I got a set of LED GU10 bulbs for the flat because when we got in there were two fittings of 4x50W bulbs each, and with the energy saving from some LED replacements (~Â£10 for 4 at ~2W ea, normally ~Â£5ea but i found a deal) easily paid the difference, especially since i was having trouble finding CFL replacemetns. However they definately give off significantly less light than the 50W halogens, which is fine most of the time as i prefer a dimmer light usually, but can be a little frustrating if i find myself needing a little extra to look for something, The light is alot 'whiter' which took a couple of days to get used to but is fine now. They are also very directional, they light up one area very well, but are quite poor outside that area, so fine if you are after light in a particular area (they are often advertised as for lighting up some piece of art you want attention drawn to) but not so good if you want to illuminate a room.

an directionality. It's hard to beat CFLs and moreso some good quality fluorescent tubes get slightly more lumens per watt (although I saved 100 watts per hour in the kitchen - 200 instead of 300- by going with directed CFLs that shine line exactly where needed vs previous central flourescent tubes that were lighting from the center trying to sloppily spill light everywhere).

Since every Home Depot now takes any CFLs, the disposal is actually better than fluorescent tubes. Considering most electricity comes from coal, you prevent mercury release in the air vs incandescents. And no, you don't need a specialized clean up crew if a CFL breaks: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp [snopes.com]

Except for the oven, fridge, and flashing lights - CFLs are appropriate for most applications.

I would love to have LEDs. But they need to raise their efficiency. They don't generate heat as such, but AC->DC conversion does, index of refraction of the casing material presents a problem, as well that leds don't generate white light by themselves (they use phosphor?) and all that reduces the light given off.

It would be cool if those were solved one day, where they got near 90% theoretical max lumens/wax (683 lm/wt), where a 3 watt LED would give off the same light as a ~100 watt incandescent or ~23 watt CFL. Even 150 or 200 lm/wt would be a revolution. But it will take 5-10 years I suppose.

Note that you can't get white light at 683 lm/W. The lumen has an efficacy curve approximating the human eye response. 683 lm/W implies a perfectly efficient monochromatic 555nm (green) light. An ideal black body is limited to about 95 lm/W; however that's not the ideal output either (the UV and IR components aren't helpful). Actual efficiency for white light is probably limited to 100-200 lm/W, and will depend on how green you allow your white light to be.

There is actually more to the equation than lumens/watt. You have to look at the effectiveness of the light produced for the task and fixture at hand. My office desk lamp is incandescent, but is more efficient than the fluorescent fixtures because it puts the amount (and quality) of light in the place that I need it.

LEDs are great in applications where you really just need an accent and 1-5W of light is adequate. Mainstream CFLs are 11-42W in contrast. Things like lighting a corridor which could either

Wow. Way to sneak in that lie under the radar. Politically motivated, or just simple ignorance?

In any case, no, the manufacturing and transport of CFL bulbs absolutely does not generate more CO2 than that saved by using them (assuming coal/natural gas powered, the only logical comparison in this case). Let's run some simple numbers.

Assuming an average 60-watt equivalent (12 watt nominal) CFL bulb with a lifespan of 10,000 hours, it will draw 120kWh over the course of its life. The 60-watt incandescent, if it lasted as long, would draw 600kWh. Of course, it doesn't last as long, but rather an average of 1/5 as long.

So the savings are roughly 480kWh for an 800lm fixture. That's the equivalent of over 400 liters of gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine, and that doesn't include the fuel used building, shipping and shopping for replacement incandencents, which as mentioned burn out far more frequently.

Now for some logic. How is it that a bulb which apparently requires >480kWh of energy to build/ship ($48 at $0.10/kWh) sells for a few dollars? Hint: it doesn't require >480kWh of energy to build/ship, or anywhere near that.

CFLs offer a massive net efficiency gain, and by extension, a net reduction in CO2 emissions. Even factoring in disposal costs at 5 times the manufacturing cost (silly), CFLs are a net win. So please don't spread that tripe!

My point was that North American electricity prices (averaging around 10 cents/kWh), being amongst the cheapest in the world, would not bias in my argument's favor. Diesel is a hell of a lot more expensive per kWh, anywhere in the world.

But if we want to take the diesel argument instead, the numbers are even worse - probably more like $150 or $200 to produce/ship - yet still selling for $2.99. Clearly it does not take 480kWh of energy to produce a CFL bulb.

If a 25W CFL replaces a 100W incandescent bulb, and the CFL lasts 8000 hours, it will save 600 KWHrs of energy.If a shipping vessel can hold 35,000 tons of cargo and the shipping weight of a CFL is 1/2 pound, the vessel can hold 140 million bulbs. Of course there is not enough space for them all, but they can ship with heavier items, and I am assuming costs are allocated by weight.If a 7,000 mile journey burns 875 tons of fuel, or 15.75 million gallons, then each bulb is allocated.11 gallons of diesel for the journey. That is about 6 KWHrs of energy.Therefore, the shipping costs don't even come close to negating the energy savings.

The assumption was that the incandescent bulb was made in the US and the CFL was made in China. Therefore the extra fuel is incurred once in the life of the CFL.Your point is good that, if a CFL lasts 8 times longer, you must make 8 incandescent bulbs, which consumes some amount of energy.

The vast majority of light bulbs are imported from China. Incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, CFL, you name it, it's likely made in China. I own a hardware store and have watched over the years as production of GE bulbs has shifted from the US to Mexico to China. It was interesting to note that some of the specialty bulbs (for example, a bulb called Lumiline [servicelighting.com]) had very high defective return rates when produced in Mexico, so GE moved manufacturing back to the US for a while until the bugs were worked out.

Anyway, this transportation cost objection is bogus IMHO. Incandescents weigh slightly less than CFL's, but they take as much "cube" space in container loads so the cost to transport is probably similar to CFL's.

I really want to switch to LEDs. I've become disillusioned with CFLs in recent years. The very first two CFLs we ever purchased, in the mid-nineties, -- my wife's reading lamp and the hard-to-reach light in the stairwell -- are still working. But in recent years (since maybe 2002) I've had a remarkable number of failures, often in the first month of use, and I rarely see more than a couple years of service. Oddly enough, I get longer service from the outside lights, which should be the harshest environment. The indoor CFL overhead lights (except for that stairwell light) last about a year. The worst service is from the CFL globe lights over the mirrors in the two bathrooms. I lose about one a month, and recently I've started replacing them with incandescents as they burn out.

I think part of this is due to putting CFLs in environments where they do not thrive -- anywhere you have heavy on/off duty cycles like a bathroom or occasionally used overhead. But I wonder also if CFLs in general haven't become (at least in part) victim to "value engineering", IE, making them as cheap as possible.

But anyway, what worries me about LEDs is that although they *should* give longer life, (50K hours vs 15K for CFL and 1K for incandescents) they apparently don't, judging by the LED array stoplights that have been put in all around the city. It's difficult to find one that doesn't have large parts of the array completely out or blinking madly. Around Christmas I noticed that some of them had been replaced with conventional bulbs. Looking at the technology, LEDs should do better, but it's all about implementation.

I guess it's not the LEDs themselves, but you need electronics to down transform and rectify the AC. Now if that's left to the lowest bidder you can expect high failure rates. It's probably the same with the CFLs. Everybody is used to incandescents to fail all the time so it doesn't make a difference if they're crap.

They do better if they are not half assed. A cheap PAR60 LED flood should cost you about $45.00 anything less than that is trash and will die. problem is Americans in general are really cheap bastards and flip out when they see a $45.00 light bulb.

So what you can buy are really really low grade crap that has not been tested and probably are full of cold solder joints. your municipality is also being cheap bastards and buying the cheapies instead of the $225.00 lamps they SHOULD be buying for those stopl

I've been using CFL's since at least 1995, probably a lot earlier. Starting with the big Philips 'jam jar' types which lasted more or less forever - I still have some of the first lamps I bought, now more than 15 years old, they still work - and gradually moving to the more recent folded tube and even more recent incandescent form factor ones I have yet to see any trouble with them. They *just work*, save a *lot* of power and hardly ever burn out.

In other words, I completely fail to grasp the reluctance to change over, leading even to conspiracy theories and pseudo-science arguments against these dependable light sources. They may not be the best choice for all applications but they are a good match for most.

I've been using CFL's for about four years, some indoor and some outdoor.

CFL issues:

1) None of the CFL's I have used last as long as the incandescents they replace. One outdoor fixture in particular goes through about three CFL's a year whereas before I used to be able to leave a bulb in a few years.

2) Color is not great.

3) Lumen output is lower, usually too much lower.

4) Dimmable CFL's are hellishly expensive. I miss dimmable lighting, which often I turn low enough that I doubt a CFL would be saving me a

The little snippet at the end of the post if off-base, but it is good to keep in mind that LEDs are significantly more environmentally friendly nonetheless. They last a long time, years and years, and they are very durable. They don't require toxic chemicals, and they are more energy efficient than CFLs.

I have currently have 6 CFLs running in my studio. all but 1 start up instantly, the other one, being 5 years old, takes a second or so. the larger ones (2 40-watt bulbs) may take a few seconds to reach full brightness, but enough light is there the second I hit the switch. the 25 watt bulbs all start up instantly.

i have never had a CFL overheat or burn out. if you are running into all of these problems, i would suggest trying out higher quality bulbs. Sometimes, there is a reason f

But typically LED-based "white" lighting is a series of discreet spectra between red and blue, rather than a continuous spectra from red to blue; color temperature by itself is not a sufficient metric for comparison.

So-called white LED spectra are produced just like the spectra of fluorescent bulbs: white LEDs are actually UV LEDs that illuminate phosphors with different inherent spectra to cover the visible range.

For a brief while, triplet R/G/B LEDs were put in one package, but those are (a) too expensive, and (b) suffer from dramatic white-point shift (color shift) as the three chips age differentially.

GE Energy Smart CFL's are a pretty good approximation of the spectra of incandescent (2700K 82CRI). They are available at Sam's Club (and I believe Walmart). I've been using them for about 3 years now and just replaced my first bulb. Since I live in the Cleveland area and grew up going to their holiday lighting show I'm thinking about returning the failed unit myself and seeing if I can find out why it failed =) Btw GE rates their bulbs to fall off ~20% from initial peak so using a 14W (75W equivalent) for reading lamps is probably a minimum.

so using a 14W (75W equivalent) for reading lamps is probably a minimum.

There is one of the big problems with CFL acceptance. I don't know how they rate the lumens, but the human eye doesn't get a 75w incandescent equivalent amount of light in it from a 14w CFL. You need something more like a 27w CFL to match a 75w incandescent. So, when people buy a CFL that is 14W and claims to be a 75w incandescent equivalent, they feel like the CFLs are too dark. Better labeling would go a long way in improving CFLs reputation. Of course, they wouldn't be able to claim as great of energy savings, but 27w is still way less than 75w.

Which many of us hope will not happen. There is no suitable replacement for incandescent in MANY applications. My house has many such.

Flor is generally not dimable. Even those that claim to be really are barely and cost a fortune.Flor saves NO MONEY when dimmed, even if you can find expensive dimable ones.Flor bulbs do not fit in all fixtures, especially decorative ones and small ones.Flor bulbs are UGLY in many types of fixtures, period.Flor FIXTURES are UGLY in many types of applications.Flor light is not pleasing to many people- it is too white/blue or harsh.Flor fixtures often emit lots of RFI.Flor fixtures often emit noise.Flor lamps are not instantly on.Flor lamps are also not instantly 100% bright, many taking MINUTES to reach full brightness.

Until you can address all or most of those issues, there are very valid reasons to prefer incandescent lighting in many situations. I, for one, have replaced about 1/3 of all my lights with flor, but the remaining can't be because of many or all of the above reasons. If anything, tax incandescent lamps to make them cost parity with alternatives, but do not attempt to eliminate MY CHOICE until there is a truly suitable replacement.

Not entirely. CFLs are fluorescent lamps. They produce ultraviolet light which a fluorescent layer of different phosphors on the inside of the tube converts into visible light. This conversion isn't 100%. Most CFLs do therefore emit a very small amount of UV light. (If, and only if, you leave the phosphors out, you get the kind of tubes which are used in tanning beds.)

Where this argument enters bullshit territory is that the problem is worse with CFLs than with incandescents. Incandescent lights are black b

An incandecent bulb produces heat from resistance. A resistance watt from a bulb or heater is the same except the heat from a bulb is typicaly at above head level leaving the floor cold unlike a heater. A heater cycles off when the room is warm enough. A bulb doesn't stop heating whent the room is warm enough.

If you use a heat pump, the effeciency of the heat pump is lost as it runs less while you heat more with resis